The definition of ‘empathy’ on the conflict avoidance guidelines provided for staff at King’s Cross railway station ran thus: ‘Empathy means always having to say you’re sorry.’

Which explains why, whenever you want to find out what’s happening when the train service hits the buffers – as in, every other day – you get the sense no one is listening.

They’re too busy following management guidelines on pretending to be sorry. Or, more probably, hiding.

If anything useful emerged from soft-hearted documentary The Railway: Keeping Britain On Track (BBC2) it was that if you want to get ahead in the modern rail service, you have to swallow a track-load of PR gobbledygook.

The front-of-platform staff in this look at Britain’s creaking and over-priced train service were clearly doing their best. But the middle management were paid-up members of the Cult Of Misplaced Positivity and graduates of the David Brent School Of Sleazeball Charm.

There were priceless moments. The look on one traveller’s face when told that the cost of a return ticket to Newcastle, because he was travelling at peak time, was £301 was the definition of the word flabbergasted. ‘I could fly there for less than that,’ said the traveller. ‘That’s your prerogative,’ sniped the ticket-seller. Which wasn’t the definition of empathy.

Empathy means the ability to understand and share the feelings of others but that was in short supply in seminars and interviews where managers spouted jargon and slogans, talked about gold medals and dreamt up unfathomable pricing structures.

In the meantime, frontline staff such as the entertaining Alexis Bailey conceded that you could take a five-star holiday for the cost of a typical train fare.

I’d put customer service assistant Bruce Bullock in charge. He had only gone back to work because the pension he got on a Monday only lasted till Friday lunchtime. He had little truck with being asked to define the difference between ‘excellent’ and ‘good’ service. Bruce clearly felt that was pointless when all people wanted was to get where they were supposed to be going – and on time.

‘That’s all I expect from a train,’ said Bruce. We hear you, Bruce, we hear you.